April 22, 2010: Goldman Sachs's golden boys to testify: Michael Swenson and Josh Birnbaum, the two Goldman traders who delivered a $4bn (£2.6bn) profit for the bank from betting against sub-prime mortgage bonds, are to be grilled by a key Senate committee loling at bank's trading pratices.

Tetsuya Ishikawa,an Eton and Oxford educated banker who wrote a book about the cash and sexual excesses of the City, has emerged as one of the salesmen who worked on the deal at the heart of the Goldman scandal.

April 21, 2010: Fabrice Tourre – the bond trader at the heart of Goldman Sachs' fraud case – was on Tuesday barred from working in the City of London in the first 'victory' for financial regulators on both sides of the Atlantic.

April 20, 2010: Alistair Darling is resisting calls to strike off Goldman Sachs as an adviser until the Wall Street bank is cleared of fraud allegation brought by the US financial regulator. The Chancellor told Bloomberg on the campaign trail: "I don't think you can stop doing business with a firm because an individual is accused of doing something."

Goldman beat expectations with a doubling in first-quarter pre-tax profits to $5.16bn (£3.35bn) on revenues up 36pc to $12.8bn. The bank also revealed that it paid its 33,100 employees about $5.5bn (£3.6bn) in compensation, equivalent to 43pc of its revenue. This is down from 50pc in the first quarter of 2009.

The Financial Services Authority, Britain's chief financial regulator, has started a formal enforcement investigation into Goldman Sachs following a preliminary investigation. The FSA said it will be liaising closely with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The SEC was split 3-2 along party lines over whether to pursue a case against Goldman, Bloomberg reports. SEC chairman Mary Shapiro voted with Democrats Luis Aguilar and Elisse Walter for the case to go ahead, with Republicans Kathleen Casey and Troy Paredes opposing.

Fabrice Tourre, the French executive at the centre of the allegations, will get a bonus this yearif his performance merits it, according to Goldman. It was reported by CNBC that the 31-year old has asked for some time off.

April 16, 2010: Attention is focused on Fabrice Tourre, a Goldman employee alleged by the SEC to have misled investors over the packaging of the financial instrument. John Paulson, the billionaire hedge fund manager, is also named as the investor who helped pick the bonds that went into the CDO.

April 16, 2010: Goldman is charged with securities fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC, America's leading financial regulator, claims Goldmanand one of its vice-presidents defrauded investors by mis-stating and omitting key facts about a financial product tied to sub-prime mortgages as the housing market began to tank. Goldman denied the charges. Shares in Goldman end the day down 13pc at $160.70.